Environmental monitoring of network machines is known. The motherboards of servers, clients, and other machines, for instance, can be equipped with temperature sensors to detect various conditions in the respective device, such as an overheating condition in a processor, memory, and so forth. In environmental monitoring applications to date, one factor that has not been made available for detection and monitoring is the acoustic conditions in or around a given machine. In instances, the failure or beginning of failure of a given component may be accompanied by characteristic sounds. In the case of hard disk drives, for instance, a failed or failing bearing may be accompanied by an increased whining or grinding sound, or a disk that is operating incorrectly due to electronics failure may emit head movement or “thrashing” sounds to an excessive degree. Similarly, a failed or failing power supply may emit power line hum or other anomalous noises or sounds. It may be the case in some instances that the first or only indication of a failed or failing part or computer may be the characteristic sounds emitted as the malfunction occurs, but if the machine is remote or no human operator is otherwise nearby, these warning signs may not be detected. It may be desirable to provide systems and methods for detecting machine faults in a network using acoustic monitoring, in which various potential failures, faults, and/or other conditions can be promptly identified by detecting characteristic acoustic signatures.